Fella's;

Over 30 years ago I'd say, I bought my wife a full set of Chicago Cutlery for a Christmas present.  It's been a very good set of knives for us, in continuous use without a problem.  Fast forward to a bit earlier this year.

My daughter's cutlery sucked, so for her birthday we decided to get her better stuff.  Where else to go except what we knew worked, right?  The odd thing was that we had a hard time finding new Chicago Cutlery for sale.  The place that used to have it now doesn't, so I went searching.  Finally found open stock, no sets, at the local Ace Hardware.  I thought that was a bit odd, but bought the necessary knives & we gave them to our daughter in October.

Now it's obviously December, a mere two months after the knives went into use.  They ain't what they used to be.  When I bought them, all the blades were packed in the ubiquitous plastic bubble, and you couldn't actually handle the product before purchasing it.  Now I know why.  The quality has gone rather steeply downhill as far as I'm concerned.  The wooden handles no longer seem to be resin impregnated & are therefore in no way water-resistant.  The brass rivets don't seem to be of the quality of the old ones either.  And my wife states that the steel doesn't seem to be able to hold an edge as well with the new ones.

All-in-all, we are very disappointed.  Particularly so since the price of the damn things was comparable with what's being sold by Cuisinart and other known brand-name companies in the cutlery field.

900F